17 March 2009

Rhythmbox, which I've been using to play music for a while, is pretty good, though it has a few issues. Probably more out of desire to try out new things (and procrastinate) than anything else, I decided to give MPD a whirl. And I don't think there's a going back.

MPD isn't actually new to me, I used it for a good while before getting my MacBook and getting sucked up by that fiendish device of the Dark Lord (known to most by the rather innocent name iTunes). For those not in the know, MPD (or 'Music Player Daemon') is a daemon that runs in the background and can be interfaced by various clients, both graphical and command line.

Picking a client to use is difficult, though. ncmpc is a rather good console application. The only real advantage that graphical apps have over it is the ability to show cover artwork. The UIs of the couple of graphical clients I've tried so far haven't really made a big impression, however. So does convenience and simplicity beat eye candy? We'll see...